


Shifting Currents

by SilverNight88



Series: Marvel One-Shots [1]
Category: Doctor Doom - Fandom, Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, infamous ironman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Frenemies, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Old Friends, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 21:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11906337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverNight88/pseuds/SilverNight88
Summary: Marvel One-Shots is a series of stories in the Marvel universe. Each is a separate story and may be one or more chapters.Shifting Currents:Doom is about to embark on a new journey as he takes up the mantle of becoming the new Iron Man but first he seeks out an old friend and enemy.(Set just before Infamous Iron Man begins)





	Shifting Currents

**Shifting Currents**

Victor Von Doom stood in a ruined castle in the country that he once ruled. With his armor on he sensed that no one was near him. He walked through crumbling hallways and under broken ceilings. This place was once the forbidding shining jewel in his kingdom. A worthy place for the ruler of Latveria to live. He took to splintered stairs and walked up to his old room he stood at the door way and surveyed the destruction within. Old memories like ghosts brushed against his mind and he turned his steps away and went on.

He came to Kristoff’s room and barely hesitates at its door. Now was not the time for old memories. Yet was that not exactly why he came to this desolate place? Victor came to a secret passage that revealed a secret door and he went down into the deep dark belly of his fortress and finally reached his secret lab. Not the one he kept just under his castle that he could always be found in whenever the Fantastic Four decided to intrude upon his solitude. No. He had learned long ago to have his real lab hidden far away and to keep a second lab that was more likely to be searched or destroyed by his enemies.

Doom walked over to an opening in the ground that led to an escape submarine that was not currently parked there. He peered down into the dark black salt water that he knew led to the open ocean. Now he hesitated again. His armor would never reveal just how he felt. It was a cold unmoving mask of metal that hid him away from the world just as he liked. He shook his head and pushed aside his doubts. Then he took a small sonic device out of his pocket and turned it on. It made a high pitched almost undetectable sound that would only be heard by certain undersea creatures. Then he dropped the sonic device into the water and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally a dark head of slicked back onyx hair appeared in the water followed by the rest of the Sub-Mariner’s face. Namor King of Atlantis rose out of the water and the dripping of water drops as they slid off his body made a constant patter of noise as Namor stood before him. He wore an outfit that was skintight with black pants that seemed painted on him and boots with holes for his ankle wings. His vest was made of the same material and it was also black with some blue designs.

“Greeting old friend.”

Namor raised an imperial eyebrow and held out the sonic device which he dropped onto the floor of Victor’s lab. It was crushed.

“Why have you requested my presence?”

Victor kept his face still hidden in his mask deep within his green cloak.

“I merely thought to extend my aid should you ever need it. You may call upon me to help you.”

Namor’s blue-gray eyes were piercing and Victor kept himself from turning away from the Sea King’s gaze.

“Why would you offer your assistance? Do you have something that you wish for me to give you? A favor perhaps?”

“I have changed now Namor. I fight on the side of angels like you.”

“We both know that angels do not exist Victor. I had heard about your change of… heart. However I dismissed it as rumor.”

“No. It was not rumor.”

“Tch.” Namor grunted as he turned away from Victor and walked around the lab. Its low lights hit Namor’s flesh and Victor merely stood there watching as the King of Atlantis and his oldest and only real ally ignored him. He didn’t let it sting he had learned long ago to hide his emotions behind a cool uncompromising wall of metal.

“I have not been here in years yet not much has changed.”

Namor touched a glass vial that housed a strange smoke like substance that Victor had been experimenting on. The smoke swirled faster and its color changed from a dark grey to an electric blue as if to warn off any who tried to touch it.

“No it has not changed.”

Namor grew bored with the smoke and kept moving, his pointed ears twitched when his gaze landed on a pile of books. He pulled them down to sort through them and pick up a picture that had been sticking out of the edge of one of them.

Victor began to think it was a mistake to call Namor here. The Atlantean was obviously uninterested in anything Victor had to say and had probably dismissed him completely. He tried to recall himself as he was not too long ago. If Namor had ignored him like that before he took up Iron Man’s mantel then he (the old Doom) would have been angered and demanded that Namor show him proper respect.

Victor sighed; he grew tired when he thought of how he used to be. The unending well of anger that he drew from now felt almost empty. That small flicker of flame in his chest when he thought of how he could help the world now dimmed at Namor’s show of contempt for his personal belongings as he rifled through his possessions. What had he called Namor here? For a show of support perhaps? A kind word of encouragement?

The only emotions everyone (he had faced when they learned that he was a changed man) had ever showed him was disbelieve. How was Namor to be any different?

Now Namor dropped the books onto the table and the force of them hitting the table shattered the glass vial that imprisoned the color-changing smoke. Now it made a small screeching sound as it drifted upwards and dispersed into the air. Gone.

Victor looked back to Namor who was staring at the old picture.

“So you have nothing to say Sub-Mariner? Nothing to comment on about my new view of the world?”

Namor didn’t look at him as he inspected the picture with a neutral look and when he spoke his tone was neither angry nor full of sarcasm. Instead it was as if he was discussing the day’s weather.

“Why should I comment on the shifting of the currents? In the ocean everything moves and everything changes. Why is that any different in the surface world?”

Victor wasn’t expecting that. He pulled down his hood but didn’t remove his new Iron Man face armor.

Namor continued as he tilted his head and kept staring down at the picture. His ankle wings fluttered a few times before they became still.

“Only you surface dwellers concern yourselves with such change. In the ocean you have to move with the current or you die. To struggle against it would be pointless.”

Now Namor looked up at him his face had the same haughty look Victor remembered form when they first met all those years ago yet Namor’s eyes held a type of weariness that Victor understood. He felt a small weight lift up off of his shoulders. As though Namor’s hard to see approval was all Victor needed. He had doubts about what he was doing but he knew that he had to see this path run its course.

Then Namor being Namor he had to finish with a comment meant to make one feel less about themselves.

“You changed your armor but you couldn’t change the color of your cloak?”

Victor opened his mask to reveal his face just to show Namor how he rolled his eyes. He was surprised to feel relief that one of the people he had actually respected didn’t think that what he was doing was just some trick and that he had some other plan hiding behind this.

“You are never satisfied. I offer you my aid and you choose to criticize my wardrobe? I do not think you should have a say on what I choose to wear or should I remind you of your green Speedo days?”

One corner of Namor’s lips quirked up in a small smile then it was gone again.

“I am bored. Let us go to find something to eat. Maybe we can walk the streets like we used to. Remember how everyone would run in terror?”

Victor did smile then. It had been so long that he had forgotten how but it came to him. The pulling of his facial muscles should have felt strange but they didn’t.

“Oh yes. That is exactly what I need for my new image; to be seen terrorizing the citizens of New York.”

Namor let out a small chuckle that turned into a full blown laugh. Victor tried to hold out but it was infectious. The thought of Doom and Namor caring about what others thought of them was hilarious to both men. Soon the two old super-villains were bent over double; laughing at something that wasn’t funny yet for some reason it amused them greatly.

*****

Back upstairs in the broken living room Victor stood and stared out at his country from a broken wall. Namor kicked a piece of rubble away as he came to stand next to him. Victor saw him hold out the photo from the lab and he took it. He flipped it over to reveal a snapshot that someone had taken, maybe Susan, of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm back in their college days. Victor was there too. In the background looking off to the side.

The edges of the photo were tattered but it was still fine. Victor walked over and pulled out a picture of himself as Doctor Doom in a frame from underneath a pile of broken chairs. He opened the back and slipped out the old picture to put in the one Namor had given him. After setting it right he put it on a shelf where he stood back to look at it. Now was not the time for memories yet was that not exactly what he came here for?

Namor stood on a pile of broken rocks that had once been the wall and he called back to Victor to ‘let’s go’.

Victor heard him and remembered just how many times he had mocked Namor for being conflicted with his emotions. For being torn apart by his love for both worlds that he lived in; the surface world and the one beneath the waves. How sure Doom was, Victor thought, how secure Doom was in his knowledge that what he was doing was right.

Now who was he? He was Doom. He was Victor. He was a man who was both and now he finally understood what it meant. He had thought to shock Namor with his change but it was the other way around. Namor’s easy acceptance of something so big made Victor feel as though maybe, just maybe he could do this.

Suddenly a puff of green smoke and Loki appeared behind Victor and Namor. Both men turned to face him. Loki’s relieved face startled Victor. Namor’s ears twitched with annoyance.

“Thank the gods you are here Doom. I need your help. I just need to lie low at your house for a few days. Nothing serious just a few demons who think I cheated at a game of cards. You understand. I won’t be a bother at all I will just stay in my room… how do you expect me to stay here Victor? This place is filthy!”

Namor and Victor both glanced at each other at the same time and then without replying to Loki they both flew off to go and find some food. Regardless Loki was not demoralized at their leaving or lack of offering any assistance; he used his magical boots to kick himself up into the air and flew alongside them. Loki continued to talk as they flew off in the direction of New York.

“It’s fine although Doom I would have thought you could at least pick up after yourself. Where are we going? Somewhere nice I hope. Not into space right? I have just a few people looking for me there too.”

Victor sighed although some things were different it would seem like not everything changes with time.

Now Doom and Victor, both one half of the same being, moved with the shifting currents.

**Author's Note:**

> For ComiCritic: "I hope that they show meeting his former villanious allies (Namor especially) and all of them being shocked with his change of heart."
> 
> I finally finished one of my Doom and Namor stories! Yay! :)
> 
> As always Comments and Kudos are appreciated.


End file.
